by Marc Everitt
The other members of the team seemed to be of the same opinion. Everyone appeared nervous. Eli thought that they looked hunted, which was exactly what they were. He could see that they all wanted to keep moving, to try and get as far away from the ship as they could. Taylor had been leading them to what he would only describe as a ‘shelter’. Eli felt sure this was a reference to the underground bunker he knew Taylor had visited earlier that day.
The darkness of the night seemed to hang over them like the sword of Damacles, ready to fall on them and leave them less alive than they would like. The night had always felt to Eli to be a safe comforting presence, but this atmosphere was one of dread and fear. They all knew the Warrior would not be far behind them and when Taylor stopped short and told them he needed to get his bearings, the general consensus was not one of relief. Sara held tightly to Eli’s hand and looked around her, for all the world like a rabbit expecting to see a pouncing fox any second.
Taylor was frowning and talking to himself as he tried to recreate his steps. The rest of the team were impatiently waiting. “Well, do you know where you’re going or not?” persisted Chris.
Eli jumped to his friend’s defence. “If it wasn’t for him you’d be dead about now. Give him a minute.”
Chris advanced on Eli menacingly, Lana close by his side. She was the first to speak. “Oh yeah. He’s been a real friend to Chris. Accused him of murder, turned you all against him, that sort of thing.”
“How about saving his worthless life? Not important at all?” retorted Eli as the two men began to square up. Alan hung his head in his hands and appealed for reason. “We have got better things to do with our time.” Sara nodded her agreement. It suddenly occurred to Eli that his friend was unusually quiet at this point, he had never seen Taylor look so lost. It was the only word he could think of to describe how Taylor appeared. He looked as if he didn’t know what he was going to do next and that was not a feature of his personality Eli was familiar with.
Taylor stood away from the group and was now simply watching and listening. Eli’s attention was dragged back to Lana as she spoke again, “There’s nothing out here. The base is destroyed, the ship sounds like it’s been destroyed, the creature will catch us up and that will be the end of it,” she sounded desperate and certainly that seemed to Eli to suit the situation.
He admitted to himself that he felt fairly desperate too, and Chris Maxwell was still standing a little too close for his liking. He had had enough of the threats of the burly engineer. “What? You think because you can kill people in the night and keep pet monsters to do your dirty work, that you can bully me? Is that it, fat boy?!”
Eli took a step closer to Chris who looked about to explode. At that moment, Sara leapt between them, “Please, whatever Chris has done, we don’t have time for this now.”
“I haven’t done anything like what I want to do.… yet,” Chris snarled, intent on taking things further with Eli. Sara did not want that to happen, Eli was glad to see. He was puzzled that Taylor had not made a move in his direction. That was most unlike him. Eli wondered what he was watching for, why he was observing them all in this moment of stress.
Sara spoke again. “Let’s get moving. We’re sitting ducks out here. The bunker can’t be far.”
“There’s nothing out there. We’re dead meat,” replied Lana disparagingly. She had given up all hope it seemed, thought Eli. He was proud of Sara as he saw the will to live she displayed, she was such a tower of strength.
Taylor spoke for the first time in what seemed to Eli to be an age. “Where do we go then?” he inflected his voice with confusion.
Sara turned to him and shrugged her shoulders. “I would think it’s this direction,” she pointed over the plains. Eli looked in the direction of her gesture and could see nothing, but knew they would be better off moving, even if it was in the wrong direction. They would certainly stay alive longer if they could keep the distance between them and the creature hunting them as large as they could.
Taylor affirmed, “Let’s get moving then. This way you think?” he turned to Sara.
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. “I think I once heard a rumour about something out in the desert. Didn’t believe it, but it’s got to be worth a try.” They set of wearily in the direction Taylor was already walking. Chris still bristled angrily and Eli knew he would have to keep his eye on him for a while. His confrontation with Maxwell had unsettled him more than he thought it would and his mind struggled to figure out what it was that had happened to leave him unnerved. He had a feeling that something Chris had said had been important, and he felt he had missed something. Within a couple of moments he had given up trying to figure it out and put it down to the stress of the situation.
***
There was chaos inside the laboratory. Dr Skandia ran from one bank of readings and scanners to another, his hair flying wildly with every hurried motion. All around the lab there were people in varied states of panic, machines beeping frantically and in the middle of it all stood Executive Carlton. She simply did not know what to make of it all. She was not a scientist and could not see why the people in the lab were in such as state of disarray.
She grabbed Dr Skandia’s arm as he tried to pass her on his way to the large transparency that covered one whole of the lab. “Dr! What is going on?” she hissed. She was in no mood to feel a fool.
Dr Skandia could see she was not likely to be fobbed off with technical explanations of the developments and decided to keep it simple. “The tremors are getting more frequent, exponentially more.”
“What does that mean? What is all the fuss about?” as far as Carlton was concerned that had been going on for months now, she couldn’t see why that would cause such a panic as the one that ensued after the last quake. Dr Skandia pulled his arm out of her grasp and looked her in the eye. “This planet will not be here in a few hours. We will all be killed. The planet cannot take much more of the stress the tremors are placing it under. The team is a little upset at their impending death. Perhaps you’d like to file a report on that!”
With that, he was away from her, leaving her stunned at both his revelation and his manner. He could not be right, she thought, they would have had ample warning if the planet were unstable to that degree. Planets do not simply become unstable, they develop it over time. She could not believe what she had been told and left the laboratory, with scientist checking figures that told a grim tale, and paced her way back to the security room.
Skandia gazed sadly at the scanner in front of him, he was excited at what was going on beneath the surface of the planet, and although he was unconcerned about his own life, did not relish the fear and panic he could see all around him in his colleagues. He hoped the stranger he had helped to escape had managed to get off the planet, by whatever means he had at his disposal. He didn’t know that the same stranger was about to arrive at the bunker, this time with others. If he had, he would have thought that the West fellow would be just in time to take a front row seat for the end of the world, and the beginning of something extraordinary.
Skandia would not have left if he could; he wanted to be a part of it, even in a minute, insignificant way. The chaos around him seemed to disappear as he sat thinking at his desk. He had set a computer simulation running after the last tremor had hit the bunker to follow the logical progression bearing in mind the growth in intensity and frequency of the disturbances. The simulation had left him with a countdown, which he morbidly left on the screen.
It read 03:26:17 and was counting down fast.
***
The ‘Cavalry’ settled itself on the sandy ground, careful to avoid the huge ridges and canyons that had appeared over the past few hours. As it disengaged its landing thrusters its internal displays told its crew it had arrived. The sentience which dealt with the running of the ship decided that it didn’t particularly like the way in which the planet appeared to be less than stable and decided to leave its main engines and thrusters o
n stand-by; in case they need to take off in a hurry. It knew that it wouldn’t be the first time its crew and masters had plundered the riches of a world that was about to fall apart. They were easy targets as they tended to be deserted if you timed it just right. The trick was to arrive after everyone had gone and got off before it was too late; the crew referred to such missions as ‘planet clearing’. The Cavalry knew full-well its crew would think of that side of things before they thought about their safety, so it took it upon itself to foresee the darker possibilities of any situation.
Inside the hull of the ship, its crew was almost ready to disembark. Kyle stood outside Pope’s quarters and knocked on the door. “We really have to be going, Pope,” he called. He knew that this was the time of the night when Pope regularly made one of his frequent meditations in honour of his God. Kyle was not unsympathetic to these beliefs, but felt it was wise to get the job done and get off the planet as soon as they could.
Cameron waited behind Kyle in the walkway and Kyle had a suspicion that, although he couldn’t see him, Fenchurch was lurking in the darkness at the end of the passage. It was not likely, in Kyle’s opinion, that Fenchurch was lurking in the shadows for any particular purpose, rather just because he liked to lurk and shadows were the ideal place to do it.
Pope opened his door and joined his crewmates out in the corridor. “OK, I’m ready now,” he said.
“About time,” Cameron replied as they walked together to the loading lift. Kyle did not need to look behind him to known that Fenchurch would be following them. Fenchurch preferred to think of it as stalking them, but Kyle wasn’t to know that. In any case, as they got to the loading lift Fenchurch made himself known to them. “What is the plan here?”
Kyle smiled brightly and replied, “The Calvary has put us down about halfway between the two objects it can pick up on the sensors. We go and see what we can find, steal it, come back.” Cameron thought that the plan seemed fairly simple and would hopefully prove to be less dangerous than their last adventure. The lift door opened and they stepped in. It slid closed and they saw the inside of the ship rise and out of their field of vision, to be replaced by an altogether less cheerful scene.
Kyle looked around the lift and could see nothing but desolate plains torn asunder by the vast ridges, which ran across them. To one side, he could see a plume of smoke rising through the thin air, once the lift opened and they were on the surface he decided they should head in that direction. “Looks like a sign of life,” he pointed out and gestured for them to follow him towards it.
At the back of the group, Fenchurch muttered, “Or a sign of death.” The mercenaries only had two hover packs in their possession after they had had four confiscated from them on Alpha Prime so it was necessary for at least two of them to walk the distance to the smoke, billowing up from who knew what. Kyle decided there was not a lot of time to waste and that the smoke was further away than he first suspected, so he ordered Pope and Cameron to hover ahead and see what there was to see at the site that may lead them to the wonderful liquid which they had come to find. He waited with Fenchurch while his cousin and the old man flew into the air and shot toward the area of smoke he had seen.
Cameron loved to use the Hover-paks, and he used the opportunity to practice his aerial stunts. Pope called over to him, “Stop that. You’ll crash it.” Cameron knew he wouldn’t do anything of the sort, but controlled himself in deference to the old man’s wishes. They were getting closer to the smoke plume and Cameron could see that it was the remains of a ship of some sort. He didn’t recognise the configuration but didn’t know if that was due to the fact that there was very little of the craft left.
They descended to the ground and switched their paks onto standby. Pope walked up to the smouldering remains, “Obviously, there’s not just scientists on the planet.”
“Maybe there are really violent scientists,” Cameron replied but he knew what Pope was getting at. The ship had been destroyed by an incendiary device of some kind. If it had been destroyed due to a malfunction then the engines would have burst outwards. He could see from where he was standing that had not occurred and deduced, as Pope did, that it had been destroyed from outside rather than inside. That did make him think that sort of thing was not the usual kind of behaviour he associated with research scientists and decided they should be on their guard.
He looked around to make sure they were not being observed by any individuals who might want to blow them up as well, but found nothing. Pope was in deep thought. “We only detected this ship and another object. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“The other object must be the research station, so this is the only ship on the planet. Why would someone blow up their own ship, when the planet is falling to pieces?” It had been easy for the Cavalry to see the damage being done to the planet as it approached the world. Pope found it strange that the research team would destroy their ship rather than leave the planet.
“Maybe they like it here,” joked Cameron, “or maybe there’s more than just research going on here.”
Pope nodded gravely. “I think you may be right about that. It feels wrong here, I don’t like it at all. Let’s have a look around and then report back.” In a couple of moments, they were soaring back through the air once more and Pope could see something else on the horizon. He pointed it out to Cameron and they went in for a closer look.
***
It had seemed to Eli as if they were heading nowhere, when all of a sudden he had noticed a foreign body rising from the ground. It was, he could see, as he got closer, an aerial. This, he knew, must be the bunker that Taylor had told him about. The team walked up to the aerial and inspected it. The only person who seemed to be keeping his distance was Taylor, who was standing some distance away watching carefully. Eli could not tell whether his friend was watching Chris, Lana, Alan and Sara or whether he was watching the area around them, but he found it wise in situations like this to do what Taylor did. He stood away from the others, who were asking each other if they knew what they were stood by.
“I think we will be invited inside in a minute or two,” offered Taylor calmly. “It might be an idea if you got ready for a fight.”
Eli signed, “So you’ve made friends here as well then.”
Taylor shook his head quickly. “No, no, I don’t think they’ll be looking at me if I remember what I saw in the base last time correctly the camera covers the area around the aerial. We should be out of range.”
“What good will that do us? As soon as they come out to capture the others they’ll see us straight away.” Eli tried to reason with Taylor. “Besides, I thought you said you wanted to get back inside the bunker.”
“I do, but not as a prisoner or corpse. The Executive in there is not the calmest person I’ve ever met.”
“It’s the effect you have on people,” Eli smiled. He was about to walk over to Sara and tell her to get away from the aerial and stand with himself and Taylor when he saw the ground move. At first, he thought it was the beginnings of another tremor, but then realise only a small portion of the ground was in motion. The guards who came out were the last remaining members of the guard force that had been stationed at the Company bunker and were wary and unwilling to suffer the same fate as their colleagues. The tales of the strange man’s prowess and cunning the last time he was in the bunker made them opt for weaponry overkill and they came out firing. Alan was hit before he even saw them coming and Lana was not far behind. Chris made it halfway to the guards, snarling and fists raised before he fell to a barrage of blasts. Eli tried to protect Sara but he saw her hit seconds before falling himself.
Taylor had been amongst the guard and had felled two of them before a blow from the butt of a rifle connected with the back of his head and he crumpled to the floor. Inside the bunker, Carlton watched the proceedings on her monitor with great satisfaction and smiled callously. She spoke into the com-unit on her desk. “Now bring them inside. I want to kill West myself, bu
t he’ll watch his friends die first.” She leaned back in her chair, and pressed the tips of her fingers together. If the planet was going up in smoke in a few hours, at least Taylor West would not be around long enough to see it happen.
***
When Taylor awoke, the first thing he noticed was the incredible amount of pain that his head was causing him. He opened his eyes and found himself in a room, not dissimilar from the one he had been brought to the last time he had been invited into the bunker. He winced as he sat up, and rubbed the back of his head gingerly. There was the beginning of a large lump forming on the back of his skull, but at least he was alive. He knew that if he didn’t escape and get back to the ship he wouldn’t be so for long.
He had no idea how he was going to get Maystone’s ship working even if the explosion he had heard wasn’t the ship being destroyed, which he had a horribly certain feeling it was. He needed to get out of the room he was in and warn as many people as he could of what was about to happen, then he needed to see if there was any way off of the planet before it all went to hell. He couldn’t see how all that could be done but couldn’t just lie still and wait for death to come.
He had partly headed for the bunker to try and get the final piece of evidence he needed to confirm his suspicions as to the murderer’s identity. He had that now, he thought, but it was useless to him unless they could escape and get off world very quickly. He would feel no satisfaction in pointing the finger at the culprit when they would all be dead soon anyway. He sat up and his head throbbed painfully and viciously. He looked around at the others. Only Chris seemed to be anywhere near consciousness, he marvelled at the big man’s durability.
The stunners used by the guards were very effective but Maxwell was shaking them off already. Taylor realised that Chris had been blasted by the Warrior, electrocuted in the ship and been stunned by guards; all that night. He shook his head. ‘Maxwell could certainly take some punishment,’ he thought. “Are you O.K.?” he asked as Maxwell looked around groggily.
